"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot."

I want to tell you about the strangest of occurrences- I was in a gym. On a Saturday. Before noon.

There were rows of joggers lined up on treadmills, trainers to the rubber, intimidating me. The smell of chlorine and flapping noticeboards intoxicating. Thank god I was there for Tango lessons and not some plug-in sweat session.

So Tango, tango tango. A lucky trip to Argentina sowed the seed. The ever thoughtful friend who introduced me to my fiancée Jordan also introduced us to Tango. The Buenos Aires tango shows sold with dinner and a bottle of wine are crazy wired routines for tourists but, in a dark and fabulous club call La Catedral, tango showed us its true colours. Couples locked together and stepping in the dark of the smoky hall, a big bleeding heart hanging from one wall and a battered red halo of lights above the dance floor. Tango is improvised. And the man leads.

Back in LA Fitness in Clerkenwell. Liz and her incongruously large breasts begin teaching us to Tango. With chests locked and faces close, it’s easier than you might imagine to be led by your man. Movement is facilitated by keeping weight on only one foot at a time, mirroring your partner, swaying in sync. The moving is natural, like walking. The man improvises the patterns you create on the floor to the melody of the music. Other couples are with us in the class, all of us having arrived here via a tango club in Argentina. I notice that we’re the only couple who seem to be making a song as well as a dance out of it. Me giggling at Jordan like a smitten 14 year old, and him yodeling along to the swells in the music. We step together with our thighs touching, toes not leaving the floor, feet coming back together in the middle of every step like a flirtation.

And then we have to swap partners! Oh how the body and the souls of lovers find each other across the cosmos as if sought and bound through the ages, fitting together like snugly packed picnic hampers. Suddenly I’m touching the lackluster biceps of David. The biscuit smell of his breath the only thing in the space between us. This is quite a different dance. I cannot perceive the intention of his body, knowing not even which side of his body is carrying his weight and therefore not which foot will be leading. Partner after partner follows freakishly, the differing feel of the bodies, so not my betrothed, is unnerving. I strain to decipher the signals of their bodies, the way of their will until I am once more in the arms of my one true tangiero.

Not to say that when we tango we don't look like dancing lobsters. Ha ha, and delightfully Google images has a photo of that….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e_Rbts5Q9Q&feature=related

Ami x